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Lady Birgitta Birgersdotter (ca 1303–1373), Saint Birgitta of Sweden, was born and lived in an environment with noble ideals and with extensive international contacts. She was a wife and mother of eight, and a lady at the court of king Magnus Eriksson and Magistra to Queen Blanche of Sweden. Lady Birgitta was a traveller and a pilgrim. As a widow, she chosed the spiritual life not by retreat to a nunnery, but by leaving the country with the aim of founding a new monastic order. Birgitta and her large entourage began the journey to Rome in 1349.

Her background in the highest nobility, and a courtly culture that she highly esteemed, is reflected in her revelations. I will argue that this courtliness is also communicated in the use of imagery in Vadstena monastery the years around 1400. But pictures were not without its problems, as will become apparent in another example in the very same context.

The Revelations were written down in Latin and in Old Swedish from the 1340s in Sweden to her death in Rome in July1373. Saint Birgitta had reason to reflect on issues like desire not only from her own private perspective, but also because her Revelations in the end formed the basis for an international monastic order. On the one hand there were bodily desires that should be mastered, on the other there was a religious desire for God.

The revelations were widely spread. During the canonization to en elite among the clergy, kings and noblemen and later they were used in the Birgittine convents, and quoted in innumerable sermons and spread to cathedrals and the parish churces. Therefore, they can be used when the aim is to highlight the use of imagery and devotional life in the Middle Ages. These texts reached far beyond the scholarly and monastic environment.

This paper focuses on expressions of the ambivalent relationship as indicated above. My intention is to highlight the often complex relation between text and image, and to include adopting of form between secular and spiritual imagery in the discussion. As desires involves feelings, I will pay attention to expressions of the senses. The question is if and how the presumed ambivalence between worldly and spiritual, is evident in the Revelations and imagery in Vadstena? What visual codes were used? How was imagery used, and what attitudes towards imagery can we trace through text and images?

This master´s thesis concerns the research field of historical gardens in the eastern part of the county of Värmland. Studies of the manor park of the iron works Valåsen during 400 years are reported. The garden culture at works in other parts of Sweden were at times high, and it is probable that so was also the case at the works in eastern Värmland. There is some literature available on parks at other works in Sweden, but not a lot written on this part of the country. In the dissertation an individual park surrounding an iron industri is described and motivations such as social status, nationalism and autobiography are suggested as of vital importance for the design of the park. Industrie ornée is suggested as a designation for this landscape park. The dissertation adds new knowledge to the body of Swedish garden history and is therefore of local and national interest. Facts were gathered from archives, published literature, historical maps and pictures, in-situ inspections and interviews. The analysis was inspired by the iconology of Erwin Panofsky.

6.

Appelsved, Emelie

Stockholm University, Faculty of Humanities, Department of Art History.

Drawings and anecdotes involving children in the two satirical magazines Söndags-Nisse and Strix during the years from 1894–1924 constitute the material. The main aim of this thesis has been to study how children are portrayed and what roles have been assigned to them. A secondary aim has been to highlight the relationship between text and pictures. In connection with this, the cartoonists’ contributions in the satirical press have been analysed. The third aim is to put the jokes in a humour theory perspective to obtain an answer to the question of what type of joke occurs in the magazines.

The material has been analysed in seven groups on the basis of the characteristics assigned to the children: “the revealing child”, “the truth-telling child”, “the cheeky child”, “the clever and inventive child”, “the mischievous child”, “the wicked child” and “the naïve child”. In the first four groups, it is a strong and rebellious child who appears in the pages of the magazines: a child who dares to go against the adult world and stand up for itself. These children reveal a great deal about the period in which they lived. These drawings and jokes have been analysed in relation to the contemporary context.

In the other groups the child created is not distinguished by such strong characteristics. Here, a joke is made of the child’s wickedness, stupidity or naivety: more general concepts. It has not, therefore, been possible to put these anecdotes into a contemporary context to the same extent.

Throughout, it is the adults asking the questions and the children answering them. This has been interpreted as an expression of the power of the adults vis-à-vis the children.

The seven groups represent two types of joke. The research shows that, in the satirical jokes, the role of the children is, in the first instance, to inform about contemporary circumstances while the role of the children in the amusing jokes is principally to entertain the adult readership.

13.

Bengtsson, Linnea

Stockholm University, Faculty of Humanities, Department of Art History.

Purpose of this essay has been to examine the color's and gesticulation's impact on the altarpiece staging of the stories and thus the message. The essay has a semiotic perspective as a starting point. The material for the study is a flemish altarpiece from Skånela church that exists today in Uppsala Cathedral. The altarpiece is dedicated to Joachim and St. Anne. The study has been limited to only analyze the six sculptured scenes in the corpus. The analyzes have been performed through a formal description and discussion by Lena Liepes low iconographycal analysis and with Norbert Otto's three-step approach for gesture features. Lena Liepe's method and theory was used as a basis for the investigation. The study connects to Virginia Nixon's research on Jesus' grandmother in church art.

It was found that the color and gesticulation analyzes enables a nuanced interpretation. The investigation has shown that the color and gestures are an actuation in order to lead the viewer towards a hidden message in the picture. And that there is a link between Skånela altarpiece's messages and the medieval misogyny that prevailed then. Anne-altarpiece contains messages that are characterized by the contemporary child and female visions.

Between 1616 and 1618, during the pontificate of Paul V, a number of sarcophagi, holy images, fragments of sculpture and mosaics, relics, epitaphs and architectural elements originating from the demolition of the old St. Peter's were exhibited on public display in the Vatican Grottos. Quite exceptionally, the fragments were labelled with stone epigraphs commemorating their history and original locations. As a complement to the exhibition, Giovan Battista Ricci painted detailed fresco representations of the exterior and the interior of the old basilica on the walls of the Grottos, giving the visitors an evocative image of its past appearance. This essay analyses the character of the installation in the Vatican Grottos and its formation, also looking at it as a result of the increased interest in antiquarian studies related to Christian antiquity and as an expression of the seventeenth-century taste for displaying antique fragments in palace ornamentation.

This article concerns the practice of making inscriptions in personal albums from the second half of the nineteenth century. The overall aim is to discuss the implications of this practice for interpretation and to investigate the cultural ideas and concepts embedded in it. The results are based on a close study of the heterogeneous collection of photo albums held at the Nordiska Museet (Nordic Museum), a museum of cultural history, in Sweden. Unlike personal photo albums produced after 1900, it is rare to find dates in personal carte-de-visite albums. Rather than a mere lack of data, this may indicate a different relationship between photography, time, and identity; pointing to a significant change in the vernacular uses and functions of photographs. The personal photo albums were conversation pieces that functioned better without text, as the images could prompt social contact in the form of inquiries and discussion. Later on, albums took on a character more reminiscent of a personal diary. The fact that so few privately circulated nineteenth-century portraits are dated indicates the relations between photographic portraits and painted portraits and furthermore it displays the similarities and differences between instrumental uses of portrait photography and private games of reading faces.

46.

Dahlgren, Anna

Stockholm University, Faculty of Humanities, Department of Art History.

The aim of this dissertation is to study what effects computer-based technology for altering photographic images had on the photographic medium and visual culture in general. The aim is also to describe the expectations and conceptions of photographic alterations and digital technology in the 1990s. The study is based on a quantitative analysis of altered photographs in the Swedish daily and weekly press, interviews with artists, artdirectors and picture editors at the five largest daily papers in Sweden, as well as a systematic survey of Swedish photography journals. The dissertation comprises a historic survey of the use of photographic alteration from the mid 19th century to 1989, and a detailed account of the 1990s in Sweden. The quantitative analysis shows that the quantity of discernibly altered photographic images in the daily press and advertising increased in Sweden in the 1990s. This analysis also reveals that the daily papers subjected to the study did not follow their own guidelines concerning the marking of altered photographs and the frequency of labelling was generally low. Three thematic Twentynine images are presented with more comprehensive image analyses. The first theme is the paradoxical photograph, which means that they present a paradoxical relationship between representational techniques and that which is represented. These kind of motifs are interpreted as an expression of an initial fascination with a new technology. The second theme is the perfect photograph, which concerns altered photographs that does not appear to be altered. The third, an last theme, the transgressive photograph, deals with photographic images that transgress the photographic medium by appropriating appearances and functions from other forms of signs and image techniques. The transition to computer-based image alteration did not only affect the character and extent of altered photographs, it also produced effects on the photographic medium and visual culture in general. As technical tools for alterations of photographic images enabled a higher degree of perfection, there was for example a reaction in the form of an increased interest in the imperfect. The uses of altered photographic images also show how questions of authenticity, reality and representation were brought to the fore by the use of image alteration in photography during the 1990s. This study problematise technology-based definitions of photographic images and show how altered photographs contribute to an increased awareness of the arbitrary character of photographic images.

48.

Dahlgren, Anna

Stockholm University, Faculty of Humanities, Department of Art History.